Bonnie waits uncomfortably for Antoinette to finish whispering with someone on the other side of the bedroom door. Antoinette's fingers are clasped around the side of the door, the only indicator that Antoinette will be right with her.

She straightens out the non-existent wrinkles in her white eyelet skirt, adjusting her legs on the bohemian styled pouf, searching for a position to relieve the soreness between her legs and the punctured wounds on her inner thigh.

"I have to leave you my love but I will be back before you notice I'm gone."

The evening in hindsight seems like a fever dream, skin flush and heartbeat racing, she can still feel his weight on her, his fangs scraping her collar, her blood on his tongue and the hot stretch of her skin of him entering her. Her breath ragged and shallow, his words, words she wanted to eat, Come for me, Bonnie. His arms wrapped around her, him letting her know that he had her, his face buried in her back, kisses and sleep, only to wake for him to tell her he was leaving her right away.

The ground is constantly moving and she just wants to have something stay still.

After coming to grips that Klaus had left, she stared at her breakfast tray all alone in her bedroom, then pulled herself together to shower and dress in another Elijah original, and climbed into the Range Rover with her fiancé'.

"Elijah, I know you well enough to know that even if I ask you, you probably won't tell me where he is but I would be remiss if I didn't, so where the hell did your brother go?"

Elijah squinted, opened his mouth and then closed it and then opened it again, "Let us focus on getting through this luncheon and then we can discuss the whereabouts of my brother."

The neighborhoods changed, ice cream color paint and magnolia trees with flowering gardens grew into overgrown weeds in empty parking lots and boarded up windows on commercial buildings with faded lettering. Over into Bywater, Bonnie questioned Elijah why the luncheon was necessary.

"We will need the witches on our side when we remove Marcel which should be an easy alliance as they have suffered under his edict, forbidding magic," He said looking over at Bonnie," But they will want the city for themselves after he's gone which is why you and I have to position ourselves as allies to prevent that from happening."

"More pretending."

He nodded, "If they ask you to perform any magic. Don't. We don't want to flaunt any insubordination of Marcel's laws to give him cause to doubt our intentions when he already doubts our intentions."

Upon her and Elijah's arrival to the luncheon, she realized this lunch was not to be the silver candlestick holders and engraved salad forks she had imagined when Elijah was pointing out that they needed to bring a bottle of wine and some freshly cut flowers as to not to show up as rude guests empty handed.

The front lawn was alive with small kids running in and out of an inflatable bouncy castle and their mamas yelling at them to go eat because they were not stopping to get food on the way home, young men and old playing dominoes on a metal card table were boisterous and jovial, calling one another out for their horrible play, the driveway was being used as an outside kitchen, folding tables linked one after another full of glass bowls and aluminum trays of food: crawfish, potatoes and corn, grilled boudin links and sausage, dirty rice and barbecued chicken. And the aunties and great aunties talking back and forth about what dessert they made, tea cakes and seven-up bundts littered the minimal space around the savory. Bonnie even spotted a deejay, who had posted up on the side of the house in the shade, taking a break to eat the plate two kids delivered to him without dropping.

Elijah held the roses and the red wine and Bonnie told one of the elderly ladies she had remembered from the funeral that they had come to meet with Antoinette.

"Antoinette, she's here," a teen-aged girl yelled through the screen door into the shadowy house, "And she brought the white boy with her."

BKBKBKBK

She overhears Antoinette tell someone, "Give him to me," and Bonnie squares her shoulders while she glances over at Antoinette's altar, the low wooden table and all of its contents: crystals and statuettes, rosaries crafted from yellow yarn and metal ankhs, sage wands and palo santo sticks, a bowl of water and a bowl of salt, a hot pink plastic basket of full of oranges, and half of a bottle of honey, crinkled and pristine photos of faces, some smiling, some a straight line and in every shade of soil from which the first man had come, and a blue glass vase, smack in the middle, full of sunflowers.

Antoinette emerges, finally, holding a grinning toddler with almond shaped eyes, "This little man is Elery." Antoinette says brightly, hitching the baby on to her hip and smothering him with kisses, "His mama had to leave for work so I told her just leave him with me so we can have some fun, isn't that right Elery, we gonna have fun," She says to the kid who nods profusely and swings his legs to be placed down on the floor.

Bonnie expected the same Antoinette from the funeral, the militant minded young woman ready to avenge the injustices against her family, the one who grabbed the attention of her and the vampires next to her with her fiery speech and matriarchal tone, the one who Bonnie thought would have gladly returned her to whatever afterlife in exchange for her Mama T.

But this Antoinette is barefoot in a sundress, sandy curls free and flowing, laughing and nuzzling a baby and beaming down at hug Bonnie like she is her long lost relative.

"I love your altar, "Bonnie says quickly, unnerved by Elery's chubby finger demands for her to hand him the colorful toy keys on the edge of the altar, "I wish I had one at my house."

Antoinette forehead furrows and her mouth downturns, "I'm really, really surprised to hear you don't have one."

Bonnie bites the edge of her lip looking over the many items laid out with care, longing to touch each one and ask her questions. "I lost a lot of things when I died, so I have to start over." She says answering as honestly as she could, "I will have one again though."

Antoinette forehead softens and she purses her lips, "Gimme a week and I'll have a special charm for your altar, a lil something something to get you started."

"Is Elery yours?" Bonnie starts, giving the keys back to the toddler who has made a game of placing them onto her skirt and waiting for her to give them back to him.

"My brother's baby. Do you have any siblings?"

"No, I'm an only child." Bonnie answers, "But I always wanted a sister."

Antoinette grins and bobs her head up and down emphatically, "Me too, when my Mama was pregnant I remember going to church asking for it to please be a sister, I even picked out a name, but here came Marc," She slides down from the bed to sit cross-legged on the floor, pulling Elery into her lap, "That's Marc there." And Bonnie notices the glossy memorial program, a young man with a colgate smile in the on the front with his arms draped around his big sister, Antoinette.

"He was killed about a block from here, outside Tweety's convenient store and my mom, she died of a broken heart two months after." Antoinette states without emotion.

Bonnie doesn't know what to say so she says what her heart wants to say, "I'm so sorry, Antoinette."

There are small crystal-like tears wanting to spill from Antoinette eyes but she blinks and they gather into her eyelashes, "Let's talk about something else, like your wedding, I didn't bring you back here to talk about all this on our first hang-out."

"Um, we were thinking late fall right before Thanksgiving," Bonnie spits out the practiced lie feeling herself immediately catapulted from the kinship she is experiencing with Antoinette, "I'm not that involved in the minute details, I don't know if you know my fiancé', but he's way more equipped to put together a wedding than I am."

"He is too fly."

Both girls crack into giggles and Elery joins.

Someone knocks and brings them plates of crawfish and a six-pack of ice cold Abita beers, and the girls eat and speak of lighter things, and Bonnie lets her shoulders drop, and slides down to sit on the carpet, cross-legged on the floor, mussing up her eyelet skirt, drinking beers and laughing and forgetting that she is supposed to be infiltrating and not actually befriending. And with each beer and laugh she shares with Antoinette, she wants to tell her that she thinks whatever in love is supposed to feel like that she feels it, and it isn't for the dashing vampire in the kitchen but for his brother, and that she doesn't remember anything before she died because she doesn't have any memories, and she wants to ask her what she thinks about her lover leaving her without a damn word about where the hell he was going.

But Elijah's voice booms through the bedroom room door alerting them that Bonnie and he are scheduled to meet with the wedding planner in an hour.

Bonnie rises and drunkenly giggles, "I have to go," and Antoinette agrees but stops her before she leaves the room.

"I'm not gonna' lie to you, Bonnie. Some of us feel some type of way about losing Mama T and getting you, and I can say that I was definitely one of them but after speaking with you now, I don't feel that way anymore. My auntie knew what she was doing and she wouldn't have did what she did without good reason, and I can see now that you are the real deal."

"The real deal?"

"Yeah," She says with a big open smile, "The one we've been waiting for."

Author's Note

The next couple of chapters will be quick and dirty updates, I am writing short peeks in on Bonnie and Klaus. I really enjoyed writing this chapter. I want Bonnie to have a good girlfriend outside of the Mystic Fall gang. I hope you enjoyed it. Next chapter will be all about what Klaus has been up to in Mystic Falls and him finally dealing with his relationship with Caroline.